How to make the unsubscribe link in Outlook work for newsletters?

Question

We send out email newsletters and automated confirmation emails to users of our websites. Each email has an unsubscribe link in the email footer and each recipient opted in to receive emails.

Outlook webmail has the unsubscribe link above the body of the email in the following form:

Getting too much email from #SENDER#? You can unsubscribe

Clicking on the link opens a dialog window with following content:

Block this sender

[SENDER] hasn't given us any information to help you unsubscribe, so we'll block everything sent from the following sender: [EMAIL_ADDRESS]

[×] Also delete everything from [SENDER] in my Inbox folder

I search the internet and even contacted the Outlook support and asked them what info they need from us to help recepients unsubscribe from our emails. After several email exchanges the Outlook support concluded that they have no idea how to change Outlook's unsubscribe link, what information we should give them and how we should give them the information.

Can anyone please advise or point me to the right direction please? Thanks.

Answer 1

Is it "List-Unsubscribe" MIME header? http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/

Answer 2

You're confusing a couple of things here. First, while outlook.com is a Microsoft domain, Outlook itself is an entirely different thing, and people can be using Outlook as their mail program regardless of what domain they have. You won't know what client people are using for email, or what server they use to access it. Second, you say that email communication is vital for your websites. Banning people from your newsletters doesn't help that situation in the least. People using the various Microsoft services that you mention have no trouble receiving and participating in those email communications. What you don't touch on, is what software you're using for your newsletters. THAT is where your problem probably is. If you go to that domain.com/unsubscribe URL, what does that page do/look like? There are 2 usual links for a List-Unsubscribe header. One is a mailto: link such as [email protected], where any email to that address performs an unsubscription. For the web link version, it needs to be a link to a page that automatically unsubscribes the user (so the link would need to be customized with variables such as the mailing list).